Dwarves found 'theme park' commune to escape bullying

A community of dwarves has set up its own village to escape discrimination from normal sized people.

Everyone in the mountain commune in Kunming, southern China, must be under 4ft 3 ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents.

Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters.

"As small people we are used to being pushed around and exploited by big people. But here there aren't any big people and everything we do is for us," said spokesman Fu Tien.

The idea of housing dwarves in special compounds would be anathema in the West, and the village has sparked fierce debates among expats living in China.

"When I first heard this I pictured myself obscure freak shows from a hundred years back," wrote one commenter on the GoKunming website. "Pay the entrance fee and you can watch these people perform."

But others said that it was the dwarves' best chance of employment given the surplus of labor in China.

"We might feel aghast at treating humans this way but this is the best way the Chinese government can deal with the situation right now," wrote Tonyaod.

"Go back a hundred years or so in our culture and we will see that we did the same thing à la the freakshows and the circus."

Photo and story via The Telegraph

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Farmer's daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47

An Indian farmer’s daughter disarmed a terrorist leader who broke into her home, attacked him with an axe and shot him dead with his own gun.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi

Rukhsana Kausar, 21, was with her parents and brother in Jammu and Kashmir when three gunmen, believed to be Pakistani militants, forced their way in and demanded food and beds for the night.

Their house in Shahdra Sharief, Rajouri district, is about 20 miles from the ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistani forces.

It is close to dense forests known as hiding places for fighters from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which carried out the Mumbai terrorist attack last November.

Militants often demand food and lodging in nearby villages.

When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked.

His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.

She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.

Police have hailed the woman’s bravery.

They said she would be nominated for the president’s gallantry award.

She may also receive a £4,000 reward if, as police believe, the dead terrorist is confirmed as Uzafa Shah, a wanted Pakistani LeT commander who had been active in the area for the past four years.

Supt Shafqat Watali said Miss Kausar’s reaction was “a rude shock” for the militants. “Normally they get king-like treatment but this was totally unexpected,” he said.

Miss Kausar said she had never fired an assault rifle before but had seen it in films and could not stand by while her father was being hurt. “I couldn’t bear my father’s humiliation. If I’d failed to kill him, they would have killed us,” she said

Text and story via The Telegraph

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Cannibals, presidential alien abduction, and clowns in space

By Lili Ladaga

On the menu for the latest edition of Weird Science: Cosmic cannibals, a presidential alien abduction and clowns in space. Bon appétit!

You gonna eat that? The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor in space, turns out to have a nasty appetite. Using a telescope scan, astronomers have found evidence of Andromeda's galactic meals. From the AP:

"What we're seeing right now are the signs of cannibalism," said study lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia. "We're finding things that have been destroyed ... partly digested remains."

Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way, is next on Andromeda's snack list. John Dubinksi, co-author of the project, says the two galaxies are headed toward each other at a rate of 75 miles per second. But not to worry: We won't be dinner for another few billion years.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

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PHOTO: M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
Credit and Copyright: Jason Ware

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Trouble getting up in the morning?

The best morning alarm in the world is a sneaky elbow in the ribs – but if you are a singleton or have a partner even more sleepy-headed than yourself, you will be the owner of a digital waking assistant, better known as an alarm clock.

The first thing you want to do with your alarm clock when it starts warbling is, of course, batter it to a pulp. (You’re only human). This alarm – called Smash – encourages such “percussive maintenance” by having the switch buried underneath a deformable top. Hammer it with your fist and blessed tranquility will return. Go to WebUrbanist to see more alarm clocks.

(Image via: Hometone)

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Desert Rats and other Folk

“Clearly I remember it was in early December of 1983, when I met an old Desert Rat named Harry who took a liking to me. 
He lived in Wonder Valley
and was a WWII veteran naval captain whose name was Harry Malley.
We drank ouzo on his back porch watching the sun slowly slip into bloody orange hues on hot desert nights when he turned the clock back with his tales of tanker ships and whales.
One day Harry walked into a dream and forgot who and where he was.
And all the doctors and his two friends, Ralph and I, watched his brain slowly die.
In the end there was no one.
Only one sister who lived in Greece and who sent back any correspondence from him unopened, unloved…
Years of sad letters left behind unopened never told the story why A mystery about Harry.

Poor old Harry, who to everyone’s amazement left behind over a million dollars in three banks!
I sometimes wonder why Harry was so alone and why he had to die
by his own hand with a gun Ralph and I
didn’t know he had.
So damn sad.
A lonely old man who built a house that had a circular hall
who also must have had a story he didn’t want to share
and by pulling that trigger he no longer had to care.”

Dave Stancliff 

-excerpt from my unpublished book - “Desert Rats and other Folk” 

ABOVE PHOTO: Old Gold by Alan Brown

Accepting Emptiness

´All form is empty´. These words of the Buddha are not a philosophy. It is not some sort of postmodern credo avant la lettre, meant to show that there is no meaning, no value or purpose in life; that in the end there is only a mere nothing as life is concerned.

The Sunyata, the Emptiness, which is at the center of the Buddhistic doctrine, is often not adequately understood.

It is not a pessimistic or fatalistic doctrine, coined by a depressed mind prone to heavy drinking and on the verge of suicide. No, it is the total and deep experience of a very healthy consciousness. For Sunyata is one of the deepest realizations of meditative consciousness. It is what we all experience when we close our eyes and study the interiority of life.

Click here to read the rest at Home Planet

Scientists say plutonium shortage could stall space exploration

by NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE

NASA is running out of the special kind of plutonium needed to power deep space probes, worrying planetary scientists who say the USA urgently needs to restart production of plutonium-238.

But it's unclear whether Congress will provide the $30 million that the administration requested earlier this year for the Department of Energy to get a new program going.

Nuclear weapons use plutonium-239, but NASA depends on something quite different: plutonium-238. A marshmallow-sized pellet of plutonium-238, encased in metal, gives off a lot of heat. Click here to read the rest at npr.

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Food for thought: the 20 FUNNIEST RESTAURANT PUN NAMES

Posted by Jillian Madison of Food Network Humor

Click here to see the other 18 “punny”names!

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Secrets of the brain: The grey matter that makes us who we are

From shyness and moral judgment to creativity and sexual preference, a fascinating new book shows how our personalities and human traits are written on our brains. Jeremy Laurance reports

The brain is our most complex but least understood organ. We can name its parts but our knowledge of what each part does, or how, is rudimentary. In The Brain Book, journalist Rita Carter has assembled what is known about the nerve centre of each individual and explains with the aid of images and graphics its structure, function and disorders. Click here to read the rest at The Independent

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Iran flips off the world

Iran missile test by J.D. Crowe, Mobile Register

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